Business organizations often use many different types of business computer programs or applications. Some such programs include enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer resource management (CRM) systems, line of business (LOB) applications, and many other business-related programs.
Many organizations also implement role-based security on their business programs. That is, a user may fulfill a specific role at a company, and a user with that role may have access to certain data, but may not have access to other data. For instance, a user who is in a human resource role may have access to the salaries and personal files of various employees, but may not have access to sales data or other types of general business information. By contrast, a user who is in the role of a sales manager may have access to multiple levels of sales data for the company, across various product lines, but may not have access to personal files and salary information for other employees.
In addition, many companies consider much of their business-related data to be confidential or proprietary. For instance, many companies consider sales records, sales leads, personal file information, and a whole host of other business information to be confidential and proprietary to the company itself. The company does not want other companies, such as competitors, or even related companies, to have access to that data.
In this context, there can arise situations in which companies can become related to one another in certain ways, but in which they still do not wish to share information with one another. For instance, it may be that a company is a holding company that grows by acquiring independent businesses (or subsidiaries). The subsidiaries maintain significant management and operational control over themselves, and the data and processes for each subsidiary are not to be shared among other subsidiaries.
Some current solutions require each of the subsidiaries to have its own separate database for storing its own business data. In other current solutions, each separate subsidiary is given its own, separate, database product. There are totally separate installations of a given business data program for each of the subsidiaries. For example, each subsidiary may have its own, separate, installation of an ERP system.
However, it can also happen that the subsidiaries desire to pool their information technologies (IT) resources and leverage a single business software application. That is, the subsidiaries (or a subset of the subsidiaries) may wish to share the cost of a single business application installation, but they still wish to keep their business data entirely separate and isolated from the other subsidiaries that are sharing the same business application. Similarly, each of the subsidiaries may wish to implement its own role-based security rules, or other security rules.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.